Michael Wilson (writer)
| Michael Wilson | |
|---|---|
| Born |
July 1, 1914 McAlester, Oklahoma |
| Died | April 9, 1978 (aged 63) Los Angeles County, California |
Michael Wilson (July 1, 1914 – April 9, 1978) was an American screenwriter who was blacklisted by the Hollywood film studios during the era of McCarthyism for being a communist.
Wilson was born and raised Roman Catholic in McAlester, Oklahoma. He graduated from UC Berkeley in 1936. He taught English and began his writing career with short stories for magazines. Then, starting in 1941, he wrote or co-wrote 22 screenplays.
Wilson's early work consisted of William Boyd westerns. His career in Hollywood was interrupted by service with the United States Marine Corps during World War II. In 1945 he became a contract writer with Liberty Films, working on such pictures as It's a Wonderful Life. In 1952 he was a co-winner of the Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay for A Place in the Sun, and in 1953 he won an Edgar Award and another Oscar nomination for his script for 5 Fingers.
He was named an unfriendly witness by the House Un-American Activities Committee and blacklisted for being a communist. After he was blacklisted, he left for France and worked on scripts for European film productions. In 1954, while blacklisted, Wilson wrote the script for Salt of the Earth, a fictionalized account of a real strike by zinc miners in Grant County, New Mexico. The movie was directed by Herbert Biberman and produced by Paul Jarrico both of whom had also been blacklisted. The film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. The film has also been preserved by the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
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